


From the First -- Oh, Those Human Women!

by TheSigyn



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-07
Updated: 2010-04-07
Packaged: 2018-04-13 14:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4524924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the 10th Doctor considers his possible future, or lack thereof, with Martha Jones, he is drawn to remember his very first human lover -- the Aztec woman Cameca. What is it about human women? Assumes familiarity with Gridlock and general NuWho history. Sex scenes, but nothing graphic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to acknowledge Pitry’s beautiful story, “But, Oh, Those Human Women” which was written about Brannigan and Valerie. Without that story I would not have written this one in this form, and I have shamelessly stolen the title. Thank you Pitry!

  
  
“Here’s your coat then, Doctor,” Brannigan said as he handed it over. “I can’t begin to thank you enough.”   
  
“I’m not the one you should thank,” the Doctor said. Nurse Hayne had tactfully drawn a curtain on the alcove that held the remains of the Face of Boe. She was still weeping. The Doctor found himself torn at the juxtaposition of that ancient death behind the curtain, and the image of Brannigan’s wife Valerie standing by the window with her basket of newborn kitten-babies, who were literally looking at the sky for the first time in their life.  
  
“So you found your friend, then,” Brannigan said, indicating Martha Jones. “She’s an awfully pretty lass, that one.”  
  
“Is she?” the Doctor said.  
  
Martha was bending over Valerie’s basket. “Oh — my - God, those are the cutest things I’ve ever seen in my LIFE!” Martha picked one of the kittens up and it smiled at her. “Ma-ma. Ma-ma,” it mewed.  
  
The Doctor managed not to melt, but it was a challenge. Martha Jones snuggling the kitten-babies was definitely on the list of cutest things the Doctor had ever seen himself, and he couldn’t deny it. Not to himself, anyway. “I hadn’t noticed,” he said to Brannigan.  
  
“Oh, don’t kid a kidder, Doctor,” the catman said. “You’ve got the same weakness for human women I have.”  
  
The Doctor glanced at him. “Who says I’m not human?” he asked, mostly just curious.  
  
Brannigan touched his nose. “I can smell a few things I’ll bet you can’t, Doctor,” he said. “I don’t know what you are, but you aren’t human. And I also know you fancy her.”  
  
He shrugged. “In my way,” he said quietly. “She’s clever.” He would have preferred seeing Rose snuggling the kittens, though, and that was an awfully sad fact. He shouldn’t have come back here to New Earth. It was reminding him of Rose, and he realized what he really needed was to distract himself from her. But if he hadn’t, everyone would still be trapped on the motorway, and nothing would have changed. Despite all the happiness about him, the Doctor was feeling sad. Between the Face of Boe and Martha Jones, everything seemed hollow and final and empty to the Doctor. “I’m taking her back to her home, though.”  
  
“What for?”  
  
“It’s easier that way.”  
  
“That’s what my ma said, when I brought Valerie home,” Brannigan said with a grin. “Take her back where you found her. Not worth the trouble. We’d need DNA intervention to have children, she said. We’ve been married a long time now, Doctor. It took years of injections for the DNA graft to work. We thought it might not. Beautiful litter, aren’t they?”  
  
“Adorable.”  
  
“Oh, Aye. Me poor mother didn’t think it’d be worth it. Interspecies relationships, she said. Incompatible mating cycle. Messiness. Fights. Complications. Goodbyes.” The Doctor cringed, thinking again of Rose. “But, I couldn’t help meself,” Brannigan said. “There’s something about those human women!”  
  
The Doctor looked at him. The cat man was eyeing his wife and Martha Jones with an appraising eye. He looked positively tigerish. The Doctor broke, and flashed Brannigan a knowing grin. “I KNOW!” he hissed. “Addictive, aren’t they?”  
  
“Utterly,” Brannigan said, and the two of them laughed with companionable good humor. If Brannigan hadn’t had a wife and family, the Doctor would have invited him onto the TARDIS on the spot. He reminded him a bit of Jamie MacCrimmon. “No matter that everyone tells you it’s a mistake,” Brannigan said. “No matter how sensible you think you are. They smile at you, you catch a whiff of their scent, and it’s all over. You can’t help it.” He shook his head with a lascivious grin. “Oh, those human women!”  
  
This was something the Doctor sympathized with. Those human women. Passionate beyond belief, determined and submissive in one, gentle, desperate, hot and smooth and hungry. Just can’t help yourself. He’d appreciated this ever since he’d been ambushed by his first. Cameca of the Aztecs so many hundreds — of billions! — of years ago. It never changed.  
  
Oh, those human women!  



	2. Chapter 2

  
Another Earth, another age, another Doctor — younger, older, less experienced, more pedantic. More set in his ways. Less willing to veer from the straight path of the Time Lords’ laws and conventions -- non-interference, no personal ties, respectable at all times. Despite his one act of theft and defiance, he wasn’t yet the maverick he would become. Too young to know better. Too old to fight them.   
  
It was a pleasant night in the Aztec Garden of Peace, the scent of the tropical flowers heady and seductive as a warm bed. The sound of insects and night birds lulled the Doctor. The soft blanket the Aztec attendants had provided, woven of some kind of fiber heavily washed until it was soft and warm, was light enough to be comfortable in the warm tropical air.   
  
The warmth was soothing to his old bones, but the Doctor felt very tired. He felt almost naked without the TARDIS, and he’d been making a great many mistakes among the Aztecs. First he had allowed himself, Susan, Barbara and Ian to be trapped without paying attention to the function of the heavy tomb door. He had almost gotten Ian killed. He was still failing to talk Barbara out of her plan to change the Aztec’s practice of human sacrifice. And then there was Cameca. He closed his eyes, trying not to think about Cameca. He failed utterly.  
  
He was flirting, he knew that. He was trying to be kind. He hadn’t done his research on Aztec customs. He’d made her a cup of cocoa and suddenly found himself engaged. This wouldn’t have been a problem if he actually didn’t care, but he did. He kept telling himself it was just a game. Maybe it was a game he could keep playing, though? Maybe, just maybe, he could add her to their little impromptu family on the TARDIS? He knew Susan wouldn’t object, and Barbara and Ian, well, they had no right to turn her away, did they. Of course, Barbara would say he was interfering with history, too. But it wasn’t the same. Not really. Cameca was a woman ahead of her time, too intelligent for this savage place. He wanted to rescue her. He didn’t want to give up her companionship. Not yet.   
  
But it wasn’t anything serious. She was human. He was a Time Lord. It was simple as that. Having reached this conclusion, he drifted to sleep.   
  
Less than an hour later he was woken, gently and without intention, by a warm, sweet smelling body that had crept into bed beside him. The Doctor surfaced to consciousness with the scent of Aztec oils swimming in his head. “Cameca!” he whispered.  
  
“I am here for you, my fiancé,” she breathed. “I am more than ready.”  
  
She was utterly and completely naked. He himself was clad in only his shirt and trousers, not expecting to be attacked in the night in the Garden of Peace, which was heavily guarded by impartial devotees to the old ones. “C-Cameca,” he breathed. Oh, hell. Suddenly, all his flirting and conversation with Cameca took on a whole new dimension. With a sudden surge of guilt he realized that none of this had been a game to her. “Y-you should return to your own bed,” he said.  
  
“Surely you jest,” Cameca laughed. “How could you refuse to share the bed of your fiancé? Is joining together not the intent?”   
  
The Doctor blinked. “N-not entirely,” he said. This stutter was getting out of hand. The truth of the matter was, he did find Cameca remarkably attractive, for a human, and her nude and oiled body was distracting him. She had clearly cleansed and anointed herself in preparation for this evening, and she was soft and sweet and one of the most seductive things he had ever seen. She was mature, but had that clear health that some of the more advanced primitive races could achieve. She had never been short of food, and the worst diseases had passed her by. She was, frankly, intoxicating. Part of him responded instinctively to her offer.   
  
But he knew better. They weren’t even the same species. It was almost amoral to take advantage of a member of a child race like humanity, with lives so short they barely began to live. “We-we should wait to share a bed until after we marry,” he said.   
  
Cameca looked amused. “You cannot be so ignorant as that,” she said. “I had thought you wise in the ways of women.”   
  
“What do you mean?”   
  
“Are you not a Doctor, a scientist, knowledgeable and learned, in both building things as well as the ways of the body?”  
  
“Ahm... in my way,” the Doctor muttered.   
  
“Then you must know such a thing is impossible,” Cameca scolded fondly. “My fertile blood has not fallen for more than a hand of years, so how could we marry?”  
  
The Doctor blinked. This was a different word for “marriage” than she had used before. The other one meant “cohabitation”, and they were not cohabiting, and so were not married. This word was more direct, and meant wedded, as in bonded forever. In no sense of her two words were they “married”. But he was beginning to suspect that he had also misjudged the translation of the word “fiancé”. He frowned. “What do you call a marriage?” he asked.   
  
“You do not know?”   
  
“Things are different in the realms of the gods.” It was as close to an explanation as she was likely to understand.   
  
“When the first child is born between husband and wife they are wed. Before that they are only pledged.”   
  
Pledged was the word he’d first translated as fiancé. But he wasn’t sure he’d defined it accurately. “And pledged means?”   
  
“Together,” she said simply.   
  
“And... in p-pledging myself with cocoa this means we are... together.”   
  
The word would have translated into English as “lovers.” Oh, dear.   
  
“But is there no ceremony, no witness before you are to be ... ‘together’?”   
  
“Only glances and sighs, or the discussion of your mother and father and his. As a woman without family, I do not need the blessing of my parents to come to the bed of my fiancé. It is my right to come when I wish, and I wish to come tonight.”   
  
The Doctor sighed and closed his eyes. There was no formal betrothal among these Aztecs at this time. Like ancient Ireland, a marriage was only a marriage if children were produced. Which meant that for all intents and purposes, he had already married Cameca, as far as Barbara or Ian would have understood the word.   
  
Damn. He’d made a bigger blunder than he’d thought.   
  
“Cameca,” he said. “I was not... ahm... treating you fairly when I... p-pledged myself to you. I am pleased to hold your heart, and you have touched mine, but we cannot share a bed, this night or any night.”   
  
“But why not?” Cameca asked. “If you are old and tired in the body, I can show you how to rise. For I AM wise in the ways of the body.” Her hand reached for his trousers.   
  
The Doctor started as if shocked and jerked away. “That is not the problem, my dear.” He hurriedly pushed her hand back. If she touched him he knew it would be all over, and would that be a disaster! Time Lords found it very difficult to stop once they’d started.   
  
“Then what is it?” Her voice was crisp and gentle in the heady tropical air. He gazed down upon her. The only light was from the moon overhead, but her eyes shone sincere and concerned in the silver light.   
  
A thousand lies raced through his head, but none of them were anything but painful. There was nothing he could say that would not break her heart. Finally he realized he owed her the truth — or as much as she could understand it. He turned to her and placed his hands on her bare shoulders, so that she could feel the truth in his words. His body temperature was a few degrees below that of a human’s. He hoped that would be enough. A small part of his mind wondered if he just wanted an excuse to touch her, though. “Cameca. My dear,” he said. She was so young! No more than fifty-three. The Doctor’s daughter had been nearly twice as old when she had Susan, and his daughter had married quite young. “The servants of the gods are not...” he searched for the words. “Not as you. We are... I am...” He bit the bullet. “I’m not entirely human.”   
  
Cameca smiled. “I knew that, beloved,” she whispered.   
  
That surprised him. “You did?”  
  
“But of course. How could you be fully human? Your eyes stare into eternity. Ancient but searching, seeing more than most, peering through the very fabric of the world, into the stars, into time itself.” The Doctor stared at her in shock. But she wasn’t finished astonishing him yet. “Your heart is so young in a body you have chosen, for some reason, as old. And yet you are older than the oldest of us. But I feel you are young. A young man barely reaching the prime of life. And so alone. So alone in a sea of stars.” She touched his face. “My dear Doctor. You have touched my heart. Do you think I do not understand what you are?”   
  
The Doctor could barely speak. “What are you?” he finally whispered. “How do you see this?”  
  
Cameca shrugged. “I have often been called the wisest of our people. If I were not a woman, I would have been a priest. Before I was sent to the Garden of Peace, I was a seer.”   
  
The primitive Aztec word did not translate well. Several words clamored in his head trying to equate it. It was not a clairvoyant or an oracle. It was something of a cross between a psychologist and a researcher, and it had something to do with women’s issues specifically.   
  
“And what does a seer do?”  
  
Cameca shrugged. “Give advice to women on how to handle their husbands, study the patterns of the people to predict behavior, list the memories of our histories and genealogies, recite poetry, judge between children on the rights of inheritance, settle minor disputes between family issues.” She sighed. “There are not many of us left. It is a dying art, and takes much study.”   
  
“A social psychologist, historian, and women’s counsel, good heavens!” His respect for her skyrocketed. Finally he understood Autloc’s assurance that Cameca’s wisdom was sought most often among the old ones. “You read people for a living?” His word ‘read’ translated into the illiterate Aztec language as one of three versions of ‘see’. He understood now the term ‘seer’.   
  
She smiled. “Everyone is living,” she said. “I was a wife and mother before the sickness took my family. I was a wife again before my second love was lost.” Ah, a widow twice over! Sympathy touched him. “But I was also a seer. And yes, I read people.”   
  
“And that is what you read in me?”   
  
“Oh, I could stare into your eyes forever and never read half of what is hidden there,” she whispered. “I read our priests and I see decadence. I read our men and I see violence. I read our women and I see despair. I read our people and in the great web of time I see darkness falling, and soon. But when I read you....” She shook her head. “I cannot read you,” she said finally. “I fall into a swirl of eternity when I try to read you.”   
  
“Vortex,” he whispered. “We call it a vortex.”   
  
“Like a whirlpool?”  
  
“Yes.”   
  
Cameca reached up and snaked her arms around him. “Draw me into this vortex, Doctor,” she whispered. “Take me inside of you as I take you into me.”   
  
Oh, hell. The Doctor was finding it very difficult to breathe. He hadn’t taken a lover since he’d lost his wife. But a human! He couldn’t take a human! It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair, to either of them! Human coitus lasted an average of fifteen minutes. Time Lords could last seventeen hours, under certain circumstances, with an average of ten. “I can’t,” he breathed. “Cameca, you really must go.”   
  
“But why?” she asked. “Why can you not?”  
  
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered.   
  
Cameca smiled. “You are the gentlest soul any being has ever encountered,” she said. “How could you hurt me?” She nuzzled him, her hot breath caressing his skin as her still lips teased him mercilessly.   
  
The Doctor moaned softly. He couldn’t help himself. As her lips traveled down his jaw his mouth caught hers almost instinctively, and he kissed her with a passion.  
  
She froze in confusion, not returning the kiss, but she did not pull away. When he left her he found her gazing down at him. “Are you tasting me?” she asked. “Do you eat human flesh? Is this what you meant?”   
  
He was taken aback. She was a woman so ahead of her time that he kept forgetting she was part of a violent and primitive culture. Apparently they didn’t kiss. Well, many races did not, before Western civilization had invaded most of the planet. “No,” he said gently. “That is called a ‘kiss’.”   
  
“A ‘kiss’,” she murmured. “As in the nuzzling of a mother to her infant.” She smiled. “Then it is a sign of love,” she mused.  
  
The Doctor hesitated. “Yes,” he whispered.   
  
“And yet I think you do hunger for my flesh,” she murmured, and the words went through him like electricity. Her hand reached for his chest and despite having never seen such a thing before in her life, she was clever and figured out buttons without much study. “I am here for you, Doctor. We are pledged.”   
  
The Doctor gasped. “No,” he said. “I cannot. It isn’t that I don’t want to, my dear, but I truly can’t.”   
  
“Why cannot the servant of the gods — or even the gods themselves — take pleasure from their betrothed?” she asked.   
  
“I’m not a god,” he gasped. He supposed he should stop her working on his buttons, but he was afraid if he moved it would be all over. “I’m just not human.”   
  
“And yet I love you,” Cameca said earnestly. “And you have given your love to me.”   
  
In a way, this was very true. The words weren’t quite accurate, but he was far too distracted at the moment to argue over semantics. Doctor took several deep breaths before he could find his voice. “Cameca,” he said. “If I were to... if we were to join... it... it would not be pleasant for you.”   
  
“In what way?” she asked with scientific efficiency. “How inhuman are you? Have you spines, like the jaguar?”   
  
“No,” he said, shuddering.   
  
“So then,” she asked. She had reached the end of his buttons and her hand was now resting on his stomach. One of her deft fingers slid under the waistband of his trousers, and he trembled. He knew he should push her hand away. He knew it. But he didn’t want to.   
  
“I... I...” he was panting. He wasn’t at all sure how much longer he could hold out on this, bar shoving her violently out of the bed — and he really, really didn’t want to do that. “Oh, Rassilon’s Rod, Cameca, I... I would not be able to stop until dawn at least.”   
  
Cameca’s smile broadened. “You mean you are an answer to my prayers in this as well?”   
  
He gave up. It was just too hard — in so many ways. “Oh, Lord,” Doctor breathed, and he rolled over her, pressing her down onto the folded pad they had given him for a mattress, kissing her soundly. She opened for him, her legs snaking around his, sticking to the fabric. She smelled delectable. He could have licked her all over.   
  
But it wasn’t right. Or it wasn’t the same, anyway. Time Lords were somewhat telepathic, and her mind wasn’t opening the same way. And if he let go... if he tried to link with her as he would have with another Time Lord, at best it wouldn’t work. At worst, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t short her out her neural net. And she was so young! But he couldn’t stop now. Well, he COULD, and would have if she’d suddenly changed her mind or something, but it would be extremely painful. “Cameca—” he panted.   
  
He could do it. He would try to keep his mind out of it. Well, he couldn’t, entirely, Time Lords were utterly incapable of bedding purely out of lust unless they were completely insane. There had to be an emotional and mental connection of some kind, or the body wouldn’t have responded in the first place. But she was human, and he had to be gentle with her, psychicly speaking. But he’d never bedded a human before, and he was afraid he couldn’t hold it back entirely. He should warn her. “There might be — something. You might feel something odd, in your mind. If something hurts you, tell me, I’ll pull back.”  
  
Cameca smiled up at him. “I gladly take whatever strangeness the gods have sent me in the miracle of you,” she whispered. “Like this,” and she kissed him. Her third kiss ever. She was a very quick study. 


	3. Chapter 3

  
The Doctor had always been fascinated by humans. Always. For one thing, back on Gallifrey it was one of those areas of study that were endlessly intriguing. Human beings were some of the most prolific and adaptable species in the universe. They spread throughout the cosmos, bred throughout dozens of galaxies, formed, degenerated and reformed a thousand times in the course of their species’ development.   
  
But apart from that, Earth itself was a fascinating nexus of interstellar events. It was central to the trade routes of the third quadrant of their galaxy, and so made an ideal base for military tactics. It had an atmosphere adaptable to many different species, plenty of water, diverse vegetation. In short, it was a paradise planet. Which was why it ended up invaded so often. There were also rifts and hotspots all over the planet itself, which made it a focal point for events affecting the entire universe. There were only a few planets like that. Earth. Gallifrey. Skaro. Gobstower. Which made Earth an ideal subject to study when one was sitting comfortably out of time. It was endlessly absorbing.   
  
Now that the Doctor was out amongst the universe, he kept being drawn again and again to Earth. It was as if Earth and humanity were woven into his destiny. He often wondered how much the Time Lord officials or ancients had known about individual Time Lord’s personal histories. Was some Time Lord or Guardian from the ancient past or the distant future looking down at each Gallifreyan’s life and saying, “This one is destined for greatness, this one for failure, and this one to get lost wandering the universe with his granddaughter searching for a purpose, shackled to the planet Earth.”   
  
Wrapped in Cameca’s warm arms, her body hot and welcoming and active beneath him, the Doctor wondered if he hadn’t always known. This felt like destiny. It was as if he’d been starving for a human woman all his life.   
  
It wasn’t that it was easy. It wasn’t. Holding his psychic energies back like this was wearing, and threatened to leave him with a headache. But if he did end up with a headache — well, like some humans said when they woke up with a hangover after a great party — it was worth it.   
  
Ordinarily Time Lord intercourse began with in intense and blinding push, which then tapered into a sweet and diffusing dream, where the passion bled out slowly and pleasantly, leaving both drifting by the end in a kind of dream state, where time and space intermingled with yourself and the other, and finally both of you were nothing and no one. It started with excitement and ended with rest.   
  
This human was backwards. It was as if she could barely feel it when he first entered her, and then just as he was fading away she started to draw him back, pulling and grinding at him, moaning with building pleasure until she cried out with a half laughing climax. Then she faded, almost pulling away from him, as if she no longer wanted him. It was confusing enough that he started reassessing himself, and then just as he had made up his mind that he should wrap it up and let her go — he was capable of ending early, it was just dissatisfying — she started building again. It drew him as if they had just started their love making, and he felt time reset. When she finished it was as if he began, and it happened again and again and again.   
  
It was stunning, addictive, beautiful. She was more potent than a drug, more absorbing than a book, more pervasive than unconsciousness.   
  
In the end he pushed her too hard. Flushed, strands of hair plastered to her face, her eyes shadowed with exhaustion, she moaned softly one last time and melted beneath his hands, utterly unconscious.   
  
He drew a deep breath and pulled slightly away from her, checking her pulse and breathing. She’d forgotten to breathe — she was suffering hypoxia. Muttering an oath he sat her up, rubbing her back to bring oxygen back into her body. She took a deep breath and came around again, gasping. “Doctor,” she muttered.   
  
“I’m here,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”   
  
“Whatever for?” she sighed. “You did warn me.”   
  
“I did, but there’s no need to sacrifice yourself for my pleasure.”   
  
She chuckled. “To be sacrificed like this would be bliss beyond imagining.”   
  
“I’m not a believer of sacrifice, myself,” the Doctor muttered. “But to each culture its own.”   
  
She sagged in his arms and he let her lie back down, smoothing the hair from her face. He could have kept going, but she was clearly finished — more than finished — and he controlled himself. He lay his head on her breast and held her, half listening to her heart and lungs, half just enjoying the feel of her. Finishing early in this case wasn’t going to leave him dissatisfied. With a human, apparently, such a thing would be nearly impossible. He would have been satisfied after a mere two hours, and that was ordinarily unthinkable. But this human woman!   
  
Fortunately, as it was, she had lasted nearly six.   
  
Even without a psychic link, that had been the most extraordinary physical experience in his life. With a little practice, with a particularly intelligent human, he might one day even be able to open his mind a little, and get the best of both worlds. Given enough time. But for now it was too risky.   
  
Still... she was no fool, Cameca. She was merely primitive and very young. Very, very young. She could have been Susan’s big sister, truth to tell, but Susan was not yet sexually mature, and this human, of course, was. More than mature. Past fertility, in fact. Nearing the end of her bloom. She would be young until she died — which would actually be very, very soon. His hearts ached. She was dying even as he held her in his arms. This precious, brief little life.   
  
“Doctor?”   
  
The Doctor wiped the tears from his eyes before he looked up at her. “Yes, my dear,” he whispered.   
  
She stared down at him as if she knew he had just been crying silently. Of course, she did read people.   
  
“I love you,” she breathed. “Beyond life itself I love you.”  
  
The Doctor felt a terrible crashing deep inside. Time Lords never said ‘I love you’. They didn’t have to. It was a feeling, not a word, and a powerful, intimate feeling that could only be shared on a psychic level.  
  
He tried to find a translation to explain what he was feeling in words she could understand, but the Aztec language was limited, and the Gallifreyian didn’t even have the words. Each person was different. The feeling for each person was different. The word ‘love’ in English or Aztec or Albanian didn’t mean anything. He certainly couldn’t have used the same word for his wife or any other lover, and what he felt for Cameca was so far removed from those that he knew he hadn’t a prayer of defining it. What he felt was all tied up in her humanity and her difference from her people and his loneliness and her insight. He wanted to open his mind and just show her, but that was impossible, too.   
  
And there it was. In those three words, ‘I love you,’ lay the difference between them.   
  
“Cameca,” he said. Her name was as close as he could come to explaining how he felt, and he knew that meant nothing to her, also.   
  
A wall of ‘impossible’ suddenly rose up inside him. This had started out as a ruse, to get information. It had turned into a game, a pleasant dream, playacting, if you will, like a child playing house. This afternoon he had been playing, offering her gardens and a long life together. Cameca had come tonight and turned it real, and now it was real and bruised and dying.   
  
Finally he found one phrase in Gallifreyan which at least brushed at what he was feeling, and translated well enough. “You are so dear to me,” he whispered.   
  
It was so inadequate, it felt like a lie. It was no more personal a phrase to him than saying ‘hello’ in English. He actually felt a pain in his hearts as he said it.   
  
This was so unfair.   
  
He really should have pushed her out of the bed the second she came. But oh, Rassilon Reincarnate, but tonight had been amazing! He realized he could say that with honesty, and did so.   
  
“Amazing and full of such joy,” Cameca said. “And tomorrow night will be again, and the night after, and the next.”   
  
And another wall came down, as impenetrable an impossible as the first. It would be about a year before he was ready for intercourse again, possibly much longer. Time Lords had a much longer life span than a human, so their sexual impulses were considerably more sporadic. He’d been told Time Lords could speed up the lag time between coitus for the first twenty to thirty years after a new regeneration. Sometimes it could be shortened to just a few months — he’d heard one man brag that he’d managed to speed it up to twenty days — but the Doctor had never regenerated and didn’t plan to try now. He liked being himself. He was going to hang on to this body and this personality for as long as he could, and to hell with anyone who said he was a fool for doing it. If he wanted to walk with a cane and lose half his teeth, that was his choice, for good or for ill!   
  
But Cameca was human, and humans expected sex on a fairly regular basis. Once a year or less was simply not going to be enough. And if she came to him tomorrow night, and he refused her, he knew that would break her heart. She’d wonder what she was doing wrong. She’d wonder if he still cared for her — and since he couldn’t describe it in any words that were remotely accurate, she’d be right to wonder.   
  
This was madness. Too much on one hand, too little on the other. He couldn’t do that to her.   
  
With a sudden crushing realization, he knew he’d have to leave her behind.   
  
He’d been considering it bringing her, actually. That afternoon, still dreaming, still play acting. When she’d said they should have a garden together, he’d thought to show her the arboretum in the TARDIS, show her the vast reaches of space, show her that the universe was so much bigger than her own primitive city. Ten minutes ago the thought had seemed so perfect. She’d travel the stars. She’d learn to read the expressions and social psychology of aliens. Her mind, so many centuries ahead of her contemporaries, would have the opportunity to blossom like an entire orchard of flowers.   
  
But now the idea of bringing her aboard the TARDIS was terrifying. Her heart would break. Her mind would fester in regret and resentment. It wasn’t as if he could return her to her people when she changed her mind — as she would when she realized life with him was not the idyll these last days had been. He couldn’t get Barbara and Ian back to their time, and that wasn’t fair to them, either. At least they had each other. Cameca would have no one but himself. He’d never find himself back with the Aztecs again. And to disillusion and entrap a woman who had given up her time and culture, who had pledged her life to him expecting something he couldn’t give.... It was a cruelty beyond anything he could think of, short of killing her in cold blood.   
  
Besides. In a few short years he’d have to watch her die.   
  
Oh, this was so unfair!  
  
“Go to sleep, my dear,” he said. He gathered her against him and stroked her hair.   
  
Humans. He should never have gotten involved with a human. Interspecies relationships were highly frowned upon in Time Lord society, and no wonder. He ran through a thousand futures in his head, and even taking into account random factors and unpredictable behavior, he couldn’t see any future in which the two of them stayed together which would end well.   
  
No. It was over. He’d have to tell her goodbye.   
  
He just wasn’t sure how he was going to do it. 


	4. Chapter 4

  
  
In the end, Cameca made it very easy. She read people. She read him. She read the end written in his face, and read it out back to him, so he didn’t have to say it. Maybe she also read how hard it would have been for him.  
  
She left him with a final gift, a tiny medallion to remember her by. For long seconds he told himself he didn’t want to remember. He wanted to forget the whole incident, leave her and humanity behind him.   
  
But he stepped toward the TARDIS where his little improvised family were waiting for him, his granddaughter and his two human companions, and he felt a twinge. All of them young. And Barbara and Ian, human. So human. They would die soon, too. Think of me, that was all she asked for. She didn’t beg to follow him. She’d only asked him to think of her. The wish of a dying woman. A dying child. A dying child who had made him feel more alive than he’d felt in decades.   
  
He turned back to pick up the medallion. He held it tightly in his hand as he set the TARDIS moving. He would never forget. She was his first mistake. The first time he simply couldn’t help himself. And he would think of her.   
  
Because she wouldn’t be the last.   
  
  
***  
  
  
  
The Doctor looked over at Martha Jones, mooning over Valerie’s kittens. He’d done it since. Lost control. Stopped being sensible. Indulged in those human women. He’d actually done it far more often than he should, particularly once he’d gotten over his concept of humanity as a ‘child race’. Sexually mature was sexually mature, species were different, and age had nothing to do with it. He sometimes wondered if he would ever have let himself be seduced by a human if she hadn’t been older, less childlike. But she was, and he had, and now it was far too late.   
  
By now, humans were a weakness in his soul, cutting through all his regenerations, imprinted in his neural net. He couldn’t get over it. But that didn’t mean he had to indulge it, either. Because it always ended badly in one way or another. Broken hearts. Shattered dreams. Anger. Recrimination. Death and pain and loneliness. The closest it had ever come to success was dear Sarah Jane, and he had nearly destroyed her. It was a good thing she was so strong.   
  
With Rose, he had done his best to stay sensible — and failed, in his hearts. It had worked, for a little while. She’d thought of him as completely asexual, and he’d simply behaved himself. But then it changed, and got worse and worse and worse.She’d fallen in love with him. As for him... there were no words for what he felt for her. It was all tied up in her humanity and her compassion and her bravery and her self-centered optimism and the way she made him forget. She was exactly what he’d needed. If the universe revolved around her, it couldn’t revolve around his pain and his emptiness.   
  
It had ended with less resentment than most of his relationships with human women, but he wasn’t sure if that was better or worse, in the end. He felt as if she’d ripped out one of his hearts when she was dragged through that wall. He’d felt that way before, but never when there was so little else to hold on to.   
  
He’d had almost nothing but Rose. Now he had almost nothing. ‘You are not alone,’ the Face of Boe had said. But he was. Utterly and completely alone.   
  
Except now he had Martha Jones. Part of him didn’t want her at all. Another part of him couldn’t help himself.   
  
Martha was beautiful. More beautiful than Rose, actually, if he was judging objectively, with her big eyes and her smooth dark complexion. Cleverer than Rose, too. The thought had the hint of betrayal in it, and he reminded himself that Rose had had a clarity of thought that had helped him cut through all the years and see the trees inside the forest. No one would ever be Rose Tyler. But Martha was ambitious and self-motivated. Educated. Just as brave.   
  
But it was complicated.   
  
It would have been easier if Donna Noble had agreed to travel with him. He wished, not for the first time, that she’d said yes. She was very unimpressed with him, and was bright as a star, for all her shouting. He suspected she’d saturated herself in pop-culture to keep herself from going mad in a world that couldn’t engage her. He’d done much the same at the Academy, all those centuries ago. He had really liked her, in an easy, comraderic, very accessible way. He’d felt as if he’d found a long lost sister, really, which was fun. Anyone who felt like family he wanted to keep.   
  
Martha, on the other hand.... He knew Martha was a bit infatuated with him — this regeneration was remarkably sexy, and it had already gotten him into trouble. Trouble with Rose, Reinette, already some trouble with Martha. It was as if his body was trying to make up for being the last of his species. As if he could just find some female and repopulate. Of course, it didn’t work like that, because there were no more Time Lords. And breeding with humans... Well. Brannigan wasn’t the only one whose partner would need a DNA graft to be sure it worked and didn’t kill her. And there was no more DNA to graft, apart from his, which also wouldn’t work. This slim, fine faced body had been all right with Rose. He’d more than half wanted her. Probably would have taken her eventually, once she was older and less — heated. Less likely to resent him for making her wait. But Martha...   
  
He liked her. She was lovely. But he’d only taken her on because Donna told him to ‘find someone,’ and for some reason he wanted to listen to her. But the way Martha looked at him... dangerous. Very dangerous. And the way he found himself reacting to her. It was like he couldn’t stop himself. He kept catching himself flirting — and flirting hard — with Martha. As if he wanted to make up for what hadn’t happened with Rose.  
  
How cruel was that?   
  
No. This was bound to be a disaster. Better to take her home and mitigate some of the incipient complications.   
  
But... he was already starting to like having Martha around.   
  
... ‘Find someone.’ ...  
  
He could almost hear Donna’s voice in his head. ‘You need someone.’   
  
Martha was... someone.   
  
Maybe it would be all right if he just behaved himself. Usually it was okay if he didn’t get sexually involved. Rose was the exception there, but he’d been emotionally vulnerable after the war, and she was emotionally — well, rapacious, to tell the truth. Their mutual needs had matched up perfectly. Martha wouldn’t be like that. She was educated. Self-disciplined. If he kept it platonic, it would probably stay there.   
  
He stood and stared at her, gorgeous and adorable, and he let his wall of ‘impossible’ slowly build between himself and Martha. It was easy. This time it was built out of pain as well as good sense.   
  
As if she could sense how heavy she was in his thoughts right then she looked over at him with a bright smile. She held one of the kittens to her face. “Look at ‘em!” she simpered.   
  
The Doctor smiled. She really was very cute. Martha was... he sighed. She was Martha. He was already losing words.   
  
Yes. All right, then. Martha. But not a mistake. He wouldn’t let it get complicated. Maybe he’d still take her home — he hadn’t decided yet — but in any case, he could control himself. He was going to stop flirting. He wasn’t going to let it happen again, not in this lifetime. It always ended badly.   
  
But Brannigan was right. Oh! Those human women! 


End file.
